What Comes To Pass

Lots to Blog

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for the amazing Exploding Blog.

Only just managed to post an item I'd written over a week ago.

Anyhow, in the interim we've had all the suspects from the attempted bombings on the 21st rounded up and an unfortunate shooting on the 22nd.

The shooting of Mr Menezes, who upon being ordered to halt by Police officers who identified themselves, in unequivocal terms as being armed, broke into a sprint, vaulted the turnstiles of a London Underground station and proceeded to run at top speed, down an escalator and into a departing train, seems to have provoked one of two reactions from most people.

Depending who you ask, it is either:

a) A tragic example of our trigger-happy knee-jerk approach to terrorists

or

b) A tragic candidate for this year's Darwin Awards.

I lean towards 'b' here. Sorry but those policemen did their job.

Wearing a bomber jacket in summer is stupid, but excusable

Running from the Police is stupid, but occasionally excusable (right to resist arrest under certain circumstances).

Running from the Police after they've shouted "STOP! ARMED POLICE!" is incredibly stupid and rarely mitigated (there are only 2 units of Her Majesty's Constabulary who are armed, if they want you to stop it's not likely to be a matter of disturbing the peace).

Doing all this just weeks after suicide bombers had killed dozens of Londoners on precisely the method of transport that you're attempting to gatecrash at top-speed is an act of such considerable witlessness that it honestly defies belief. The only thing this guy could have done to have made this any more farcical would be to scream out "DEATH TO THE KUFFAR! ALLAHUAKHBAR!" as he ran. The actions taken by Mr Menezes are so ridiculous that the only sentences I have to describe them are quoted directly from the Sci-Fi Sitcom 'Red Dwarf' ("... a battle of wits with a stuffed Iguana", "... Who would do such a thing? Only a Yoghurt!" etc).

As empty as it may sound, having savaged Menezes' decisions that day, my heartfelt condolences go out to Mr Menezes' family.

Nonetheless I'm sure as hell not going to start pinning the blame on the Police. If they hadn't shot him, with the circumstances of the event being as described, I'd be asking some serious questions of the Metropolitan Police's ability to defend London.

Later

John

That'll teach them!

No good Egyptians received sacred justice at the hand of Allah's most blessed Muj'hadeen.

That'll teach them for invading Saddam's Iraq! Remember children: If you don't go to war with Muslim countries you don't reap the horrible harvest of Allah's wrath!

Explain your way out of this one Guardianistas!

Later

John

Hmm

Has this reviewer actually watched the film she's writing about?

The film in question is "Kicking and Screaming" the Will Ferrel Comedy where everyone's favourite funnyman ends up coaching his son's football team. I say "football" because I'm a Brit, as everyone knows we call 'soccer' by its rightful name and 'gridiron' by the name "American football". So I'm left wondering as to how such an epic goof-up as this could be loosed upon the pages of the Times:

Ferrell plays a well-meaning but clueless dad who is recruited to coach his son’s little league American football team. Ferrell plays a well-meaning but clueless dad who is recruited to coach his son’s little league American football team.

And 'Wendy Ide' plays a reviewer who may well have skipped the screening of this film and made some easy assumptions about what it's about. Seriously, I haven't read anything in that review that I wouldn't have ascertained from watching the trailer. That's one monumental fluff-up.

Oh and terrorists are bombing the London Transport System again. The Stopwatch is running till George Galloway starts blaming Homosexuals, Jews and us.

Later

John

Holy Crap!

Why didn't anyone tell me there's a Futurama straight-to-DVD movie in the works? Everyone who knows me IRL probably knows how much of a fan I am of Futurama, probably because I spent all of last summer watching episodes with the commentary on.

I'll be pre-ordering this one and roping my mates in to watch it when it comes out.

God Bless David X Cohen!

Later

John

How about 'no'?

The UN's task group, set to ascertain what to do about the internet has come up empty.

'Controlling' the internet is of course a slightly dubious pretense from a technical point of view, the internet is simply a bunch of DNS servers that point to each other and has more or less been cobbled together out of acceptance and compliance with standards that people have voted for 'with their feet' so to speak. Why do we use HTTP? Cause lots of people decided it was the best way to go all those many years ago.

Given that most of the catcalls for the UN to obtain some sort of control over the current infrastructure are from tyrannous dictatorships and oppressive autocrats who seek to restrict access to information for their enthralled populations I can't really see this being a good idea.

American companies and the Technocracy of Lesser Geeks are largely responsible for what the net is now and they haven't 'given it up', so it seems a little presumptuous to convene an expensive council to decide whether a bloated autocratic body ought to take control of what is one of the greatest creations of private enterprise in the 20th century (albeit one that ironically owes its conception to studies performed by CERN and the United States Military).

I've spent long enough moaning about the Great Firewall of China. Although the free internet can be a meeting place and means of communication for terrorism in the world today, it is also a great beacon of hope for many. Take a look at the Iranian Students Movement, the political activist blogs that sprung up in china, the Iraqis who had a chance to air their side of the story during the war.

The internet is the most powerful political forum that man has ever seen and ultimately allowing its subjugation to the whim of petty dictators the world over, who already do a decent job of monitoring and restricting access, is really a slap in the face to those who believe in what the internet is and what it could be.

I'll let a UN group 'control' the internet just as soon as the UN enacts directives to stop naming nations like Syria the head of its Human Rights Commission. I honestly don't see why being left of centre implies some sort of slavish devotion to ever increasing regulation by such groups, if a Government is poor we lampoon it and vote it out of office, the way some on 'my' side of the political divide act you'd think the UN was the Glorious Democratic Socialist Party of the Motherland, free of vice and just the sort of people we want running things.

I don't want any government running the net. As an entity it exists only because those who control DNS servers the world over have decided to point their ports in certain directions. It's the closest thing we have to a self-enginered, organically grown, extra-national community and it exists because we choose to have it exist - that gives me hope for the future of man and it makes me despair at the possibility that it may be wrought from the grasp of its creators and maintainers.

The UNternet? No thanks.

Later

John

Harry Potter

Nope, I haven't read it yet.

I thought ahead and put in a pre-order in January. Sadly Amazon didn't let me change my address for the order so now that I've moved house the books are sitting in the Rowhedge Village Post Office.

Curse my addiction to the storyline. I have roughly a billion pages of teenage angst to look forward to! If I wanted that I'd just read old Blog Archives (or browse over to LiveJournal for some Angstyness, straight from the source).

Those who have the book aren't reading this post, they're sitting in a comfy armchair/bath/sofa-corner and reading about Harry's adventures at Hogwarts School of astonishing parallels with Jane Murphy's 'Worst Witch' Academy.

Damn I wish I was them. Only my dislike of waste is stopping me from going out and picking up a copy.

Later

John

Whoohoo!

The government is going to start deporting clerics who preach violence and terrorism.

It's about bloody time, Abu Hamza's poker buddies have no place in our free society. Can we get rid of George Galloway next? If inciting violence against the British people carries the penalty of deportation he should be out on his arse.

Later

John

Nigella Lawson

I walked downstairs to find my sister watching Nigella Lawson hosting a show which seemed to be almost identical in format to Oprah.

She's certainly got any cookery sections down but I wonder how she'll do with no Dr. Phil. No doubt we'll soon be seeing a plump South Londoner on, talking people through their problems with a 'no messin' approach to his craft.

It's a good thing she's only producing this show for the UK, else the intensely business-savvy Oprah would probably crush her beneath her steely billionaire heels. That would be a shame because I have a certain fondness for Nigella that found its roots when she first appeared on TV with her no-nonsense cooking show looking drop dead gorgeous (as she still does).

She looks stunning both with straightened and curly hair, but today someone in makeup/styling had decided that a happy medium might be reached and failed abysmally, too much volume without the curls does not work.

(and the award for the least-hetrosexual post on this blog goes to...)

In the process of writing this post I realized there's something of a pattern in the women I find attractive. Here, side by side, are Catherine Parker of 'The Pretender' fame, Marisa Tomei and Nigella Lawson.

Well, at least I have a 'type' even if that 'type' is "clone".

Later

John

The Rumour Mill

It has come to my attention through sources who work in certain city councils that the casualty numbers are set to rise in the coming days. Not because they haven't yet perished in spite of the work of our medical services but because the numbers combined with further information regarding attacks would spark considerable civil unrest.

I cannot vouch entirely for this information but I can only offer my assurances that its source is considered trustworthy (good god I sound like some idiot Democratic Underground forum-poster). The casualty figures will steadily rise to about 200.

There have been other bombs planted in 2 Mosques and 1 Catholic Church.

It has been said that none of this has been released to the public yet and that it will instead be either permanently hushed or revealed over a period of time so as not to spark the civil unrest or turmoil that would probably result from it all being revealed at once.

Again I hope that this is all a network of rumours and chinese whispers but I fear, knowing their source, for their veracity. I only blog this because apparently the media is in agreement not to report these goings on and because let's face it, 500 people who read this blog each day will probably just laugh this one off as a prank post and certainly aren't enough people to start some rioting in the streets (from what I know of my readership, none would stoop to that level irrespective of the circumstances).

I hope honest to god, that I can look sheepish in the coming years about this. That I can hold my hands up and say "you got me, that was a good one" to its source.

I don't post to indulge in some scare-mongering or out of some sick desire to say "I told you so" if it turns out that this is true, but simply because I'm not sure what else to do with the information. I'm not a journalist so I don't have a job to lose by blogging this, only credibility and let's face it, no one gets their facts from Blogs - we're opinion journals.

Take it with a pinch of salt.

John

I actually feel like vomiting.

Harry's Place covers the BBC's sudden retraction of the use of the words "terrorist" to describe the London attacks. I feel betrayed, disgusted and honestly sickened by this.

If the British Broadcasting Corporation can't call THESE terrorists by their name when they strike in their own backyard there really is no hope for the organization.

Fuck the BBC.

Later

John

The true targets

It's been noted already but I feel the urge to write about the targets of the bombings and how it all stacks up for me.

When the news filtered through there was one thing I couldn't understand. Why the hell did they bomb Aldgate?

My University's in Aldgate and not a lot else is. Sure there's St Mary's Axe but you can get there just as fast if not faster from Liverpool Street Station itself. Aldgate is just about where central London meets the slightly dodgier areas of the east end. The station is never packed, even at rush hour (and I know having had late lectures or library periods). The Circle line can get a bit full but it's hardly sardines-time.

Heck if I wanted to kill as many people and cause as much damage as was humanly possible I know exactly where I'd have bombed. The terrorists didn't draw this plan on the back of a beer coaster, they would have planned meticulously (as can be seen in the use of the 1-2 Tube/Bus strike, reminiscent of attacks in Israel). They'd have reached the same conclusion, it's the one that any Londoner would reach.

The Central Line.

Back in the day, the MTR was fundamentally the same as the District Line's infrastructure is today, many people living in Hong Kong won't remember the old MTR carriages but they were identical in all but seating arrangements to the ones still used by the District Line. However, unlike their London-based brothers, the carriages in Hong Kong reached such a level of passenger-saturation that one literally could not breathe, I was fortunate to be a small child at the time of all this and was far more interested in growing the extra foot or so I needed to be able to finally reach those inviting hand-grips that dangled from the ceiling, than in negotiating an extra inch or so of breathing space.

The point is that I had never been in a crush so palpably asphyxiating as the old MTR at rush hour until I got onto the Central Line during the morning commute. If you are courteous and let other people onto the train first before you, you had better hope that you're not the same height as me, because when the doors shut, I literally had to curve my neck down to my chest to fit into the arching carriage. My cheek was more more or less resting on top of the woman's head in front of me.

If I wanted to kill as many westerners as possible I'd have detonated or planted my device on one of those trains. It's a no brainer.

Not only would the shockwave be able to kill far more people by virtue of their tight-packing (indeed after the blast you'd have probably lost half a dozen more commuters to a "Hillsborough Disaster" effect as people panicked trying to escape) but the tunnels of the central line are compact and tight, unlike the relatively airy ones that house the Circle line, so the blast would have had much less opportunity to dissipate and would have resulted in more devastation.

The Piccadilly line was bombed which shows exactly what I'm talking about, by far the most devastating blast and probably accentuated by the nature of the carriage and passenger density (the Piccadilly line uses the same carriages as the Northern and Central line).

But the terrorists chose Aldgate, not only that but they also chose Edgeware Road. For anyone who hasn't an understanding of Islamism's conflict with moderate Islam this is a puzzler.

Edgeware Road is the undisputed centre of Islam in Europe today. It houses the foremost scholars in centres of scriptural interpretation, it has a multitude of important Mosques and is basically the Mecca of Europe. If I were a white supremacist Nazi knuckle-dragger who wanted to kill as many Muslims as I could that's where I'd head with my high-powered rifle.

Bombing outside the Edgeware Road station is likely to kill the highest concentration of Muslims possible and that's exactly the intended effect of the bomb. Not only would it be a joke to say that this was anything other than the express intention of the terrorists as they clearly spent months planning this escapade but even if it wasn't, there are dozens of stops on the London Underground, just in Zone 1 there are far more tempting targets.

The bombs were set to kill as many moderate Muslims as humanly possible, they couldn't honestly have been better placed. Islamism seeks the re-establishment of the Caliphate and that doesn't just mean the subjugation of all Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus to the 'will of Allah' but also of those Muslims who aren't-Muslim-enough for the tastes of the Islamists.

The bombings were intended to send a message to these Muslims who live in our free society that their reforms must end, that there is only one true interpretation of the Koran, and it clearly states that the kuffar should be cleansed and that the abrogated religions be stomped. Women must remain under heel and homosexuals be put to the death.

There is simply no other way to explain the targeting of the bombs. Not if you're a Londoner, not if you've travelled the tube every day and not if you've spent your afternoons in Aldgate and the London Metropolitan Student Union Pub (which is, despite its best intentions, a dive btw).

Later

John

Disgusting

If there was ever any doubt as to the idiocy of the BBC and its total inability to grasp the facts and ideologies of Islamism it is clearly demonstrated by this paragraph from an article posted on its news website:

Britain therefore remains in the front line, and the option of withdrawing from Iraq and minimising the risk of further attacks is not presently open to British voters. Britain therefore remains in the front line, and the option of withdrawing from Iraq and minimising the risk of further attacks is not presently open to British voters.

Harry's Place

Harry's Place has been phenomenal in the past 24 hours and finding such an excellent Churchillian quote is the icing on the cake.

I can't paste it here because that would be meta-quoting and generally 'thieving' so here's the link.

Funny how the man's words continue to have relevance even today. You'd have thought that being spot on about the cold war for 50 years after his initial predictions would have been enough for him.

Later

John

Not Ever

74 point drop in the FTSE 100? That's just a bit beyond normal trading, the transport will nearly all be back on track apart from the tube which isn't going to be restarted till the crime scene investigation is complete. It's back to business as usual. At least as far as it can be, with 37 now declared dead and who knows how many more to come (that's without counting the undoubted fatalities from the Tavistock Square Bus) the pain for many will take many months, even years to fade. We shall ensure that the memory of this heinous crime does not.

London is an historic City. It survived the Blitz. In the words Tony Blair gave the nation tonight, It can and will survive this through the "quiet but true strength" that all people of the United Kingdom possess.


Every day that I went to University for my lectures I took the circle line from Liverpool Street to Aldgate and often back again. In the news pictures of Aldgate station, corralled off by blue tape you can see the purple sign of London Metropolitan University's Calcutta house in the background. The same train I took every day, this morning conveyed a despicable enemy, a villain without remorse or decency.

It is still unclear what the total casualty number will be for that particular bomb but I am thankful that I am not among its victims. I am resolved to never become one of its victims.

To that end I will not suffer prejudice or violence to continue in its wake, nor will I cower in fear or lash out at those fundamental principles of decency that it sought to attack in some form of misguided sympathy with its evil.

For that is what it means to be the victim of a terrorist attack, it is why our enemy can be so potent. The slain victims have their numbers reborn in triplicate in those who are shocked into submission, self doubt and the petty recrimination of the institutions who's mutual protection was paid for by the blood of their ancestors.

I say it again. I will never be its victim.

God Bless

John

There has been a terrorist attack in London

Some in the Aldgate area where my university is. I make the journey to Liverpool Street and then onto Aldgate/Aldgate East station every day when I'm at university. Moorgate was where I was in my first year. All three stations have been attacked and bombed.

Just to let you all know none of my family have been harmed to my knowledge. I'll blog more about this incident in the coming hours.

God Save the Queen and God Bless the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

John

Sod Off Swampy!

Oh what a surprise! The anti-globalization protesters turned to violence in Edinburgh!

Thankfully Police forces have learned the lessons of Milan and there were hundreds of extra officers available to hold off the assailants who threw rocks and other light missiles. They also managed to stop the wanton ransacking of corporate offices.

Violent protest is in itself a pretty stupid way to get things done but what I object to mostly is the fact that most of these people don't have a great deal to protest about. Capitalism and Globalization work only because people make them work, the way to 'destroy' Capitalism is not to attack its edifices but to convince people that it's not in their best interest. Unfortunately for these self-proclaimed 'anarchists' it's very often in people's best interests to continue with a Capitalist society, which is why they do.

The 'anarchists' can't get their own way so they start smashing things up. Pathetic.

Later

John

(PS: The title is a reference to this)